I thought this picture was particularly fascinating because you can replace “creativity” with “cognitive-behavioral therapy.” And those are two of the most important things in my life.
I always thought that certainty was the goal and that doubt was the adversary, but it was just another lie.
What do you think of this quote?
The two biggest liars I know:
1) Satan, the father of lies.
2) Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
And one of the most often-repeated and terrifying lies is this: you will always feel this way.
It’s not true. It’s not only a lie but a dangerous one– it pushes us to do something to relieve the anxiety. And then those compulsions become their own monsters. We build our lives on this ugly foundation of deception.
Thoughts are just thoughts; they do not necessitate actions. OCD tells lies like you will hurt your child, you will cause someone to kill himself, if you don’t do that just right then something bad will happen, it is all your responsibility.
LIES.
You do not keep the world spinning on your own.
In fact, you don’t keep it spinning at all.
Learn the enemy’s voice– and when you hear it, know that what it says is a lie. It’s the only language it speaks.
Last year, I posted that Christmas isn’t fun for everyone, and today I am thinking again how that is true. And not only Christmas, but other holidays too.
Thanksgiving is just behind us, and to be honest, I am glad. Mine was fine, very lowkey– I spent it with my sister and brother, eating pizza and banana cream pie, watching the Dallas game and hushing my voice when the Cowboys fell behind the Redskins and my brother raged at the TV screen. It was fun, very chill, lazy, and we all met up at Mom and Dad’s house, even though the parents were in Missouri to see Grandma and the rest of Mom’s family.
But it’s these winter holidays that do me in. While everyone else is giddy with anticipation, I am anxious mostly for them to be OVER. Somehow there is an expectancy surrounding the actual holiday, something that stresses me out and makes me just want to return to normalcy.
I think, for me, it’s a combination of the cold weather (it snowed all afternoon in Minnesota on Thanksgiving), the claustrophobia of bundling up in jackets and scarves, real or imagined seasonal depression, and memories of high school, when the holidays were the hardest.
1997. Thanksgiving. It was the first real breakdown of my life. I can remember it like it was yesterday and not fifteen years ago. Was God real? How could anyone ever really know? And if I didn’t know, then wasn’t I hellbound? (Such a paradox, I know– if there was no God or heaven, then there would also be no hell.) I was in 10th grade, and OCD was swallowing me whole, and it would still be another seven years before it would even have a name.
I was in Missouri with the rest of the family, breaking away from the games and conversation and cooking upstairs to retreat to Grandma’s basement, lock myself in the bathroom, and sob. The ground had been taken from underneath my feet, and all I could do was weep– all while hiding it from the rest of the family, all those happy Christians upstairs, secure in their beliefs.
I can picture myself now, doubled over on the bathroom floor, lost and sad and scared and not understanding that God Himself could supercede my disbelief and make Himself known to me. It was a dark year that followed. I was scared of everything, especially of dying without knowing that God was real. I held my breath when I’d pass a car on the highway, knowing I was inches from my death– and maybe eternal death.
OCD, you thief. I hate you with such intensity.
For years after that, I could not return to Missouri without being triggered into a complete relapse which would take weeks to recover from. Once I went to college, I refused to return. I wonder what my mom’s side of the family thought– if they wondered if I was stuck-up or selfish for not making that 11-hour drive to see them. It was only once a year, for goodness sakes. They didn’t know any of the background, didn’t know the way that just crossing that state border into Missouri had become the instant switch for me to question my faith.
Christmas stumbled along after Thanksgiving, and it was just as hard. And so, these holidays over the years cemented themselves into difficult seasons that I would have to survive. And even though November and December are nothing like they were even ten years ago, those memories are strong.
I know there are a lot of people out there who will have such a hard time this season, those of you who have Christmas hang over you like a stormcloud, who will breath a sigh of relief when you return to “life as usual” on the day after New Years. I’m so sorry, and I totally understand. I hope that this year will be different for you– that God will supernaturally supercede your painful memories and depression and general feelings of wrongness, and that He will give you joy in your hearts instead of these.
As Christmas approaches, my prayer for you is this: Jesus Christ, You are the Word that became flesh, a holy incarnation that blows my mind every time I stop to consider it. Please overwhelm us with the sacred mystery of it all in ways that memories, depression, OCD, anxiety, and other mental illnesses can’t defeat. Jesus, be the mighty redeemer that You have been and continue to be and REDEEM this holiday season for those of us who need a rescue. Hold us in real ways that we can feel. Amen.
OCD is sometimes known as “the doubting disease.” I hate it. So, so much.
I am so grateful to have endured cognitive-behavioral therapy and no longer bow at that ugly throne.
Last Wednesday, I was interviewed about my OCD in front of a group of around 100 students at the college where I work. It was such a blessing to be able to share with them. We talked about wanting to keep OCD a secret, about how OCD affected my relationships, about cognitive-behavioral therapy, about how long it took for me to find relief.
Afterward, I had a small group of students who hung around to ask questions and to connect with me. One girl was crying, telling me her older sister had OCD and she hoped that her sister could “come as far” as I had. Another told me that she had never had the chance to meet someone who struggled the same way as she did. Another asked some great, probing questions about CBT. Two days later, I had a mom email me and tell me that her daughter had come to my chapel talk and told her how great it was to hear from someone else who’d been diagnosed with scrupolosity. I’ve scheduled or am scheduling several coffee dates with these newfound obsessive-compulsive friends.
The mom wrote:
I could tell it meant a lot to her the other night to hear that someone she knows, and is successful and enjoying her career, and has remained faithful amidst all the doubts scrupulosity brings is living an abundant life. You are the first person she’s met that truly struggles as she does; someone who understands better than any councelor or psychologist or psychiatrist OR MOM WHO HAD READ EVERY BOOK SHE CAN GET HER HANDS ON TO HELP HER DAUGHTER.
It’s sad, but it’s also true. No one really gets an obsessive-compulsive like another obsessive-compulsive. I am so grateful for every opportunity I have to connect with someone else who GETS IT. We haved lived a nightmare together– while others only hear about it second-hand. OCs truly share a unique experience of pain, struggle, and attack.
I hope that these new OCs I’ve connected with will also one day share my story of victory. Please Jesus.
Here is an article I recently wrote for the student newspaper at the university where I work …
I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It is my distinct pleasure to share this with others because I have learned how much freedom there is to gain by sharing my real self.
Years ago, I harbored my secret, held it tight in my fists, knowing that if I released it to the world, I could never go back to “the way things were.” It would create an unalterable “before” and “after,” and I wasn’t sure I was ready for people’s avoidance (at best) or condescension (at worst).
Instead, what happened was that a long-time friend told me that he too struggled with OCD. He was so ashamed of it that he hadn’t even told his own family. Then someone else told me about her struggles with an eating disorder. Left and right, people started removing their masks. The more vulnerable I made myself, the more vulnerable others were willing to be with me, and this honesty worked as a glue between our hearts.
Honest sharing from one person draws out honest sharing from others. In other words, freedom begets freedom.
Frederick Buechner has this amazing quote, which reads, “I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.”
For years, I thought I was some kind of anomaly. I’m not. I’m just a girl living in a fallen world, and I stand alongside a world of brothers and sisters in Christ who share my same hunger to be fully known and fully loved.
Community matters. Northwestern, open up your hearts and lives to one another this year. These early weeks of the semester are exciting ones; I am thrilled when I think of all the possibilities and opportunities stretching out before the student body this year. Be the kind of grace-filled community that welcomes vulnerability with open arms. Love each other with the wild love of Jesus Christ, a love that encourages freedom, a self-sacrificing love.
OCD. These days, I drop those three little letters into conversation pretty much any chance I get. I am not ashamed of it or nervous to tell people I am an obsessive-compulsive. I am only hoping that my newfound freedom will beget freedom.
The week after OCD Awareness Week, I am going to be a part of a breakout chapel service at the university where I work. (I am employed by Northwestern College, the most wonderful Christian college in the world … as an alumnus, I’m a little biased. Ha!) I am going to be interviewed by one of the campus therapists, and I am just so eager to tell my story.
I think one of the most helpful things for OCs is to hear their own story on someone else’s lips.
It makes us feel less alone.
I remember my first conversation with another obsessive-compulsive. I was sitting on a dock underneath a sky of summer stars, and as we talked, it was like shrugging off a giant sheath that had separated me from everyone else. I was not alone; this person had the same experiences.
And when I read Kissing Doorknobs by Terri Spencer Hesser, it was like reading my own biography. It stole power from OCD, just reading that, because it showed me how not creative the disorder is … sure, it has a variety of manifestations, but at their core, they are really very similar.
And that is what I am hoping will happen for someone in the audience on October 17th. For that person to say, That sounds just like me! I am not an anomoly.
Last week, I ventured to the Fairview Medical Center at the University of Minnesota to see my beloved psychiatrist Dr. Suck Won Kim for the last time before his retirement. Dr. Kim is a skinny Korean man with salt-and-pepper eyebrows and sharply combed hair. I met him first in 2008 when, after years of failed prescriptions, my old psychiatrist essentially threw in the towel and referred me to Dr. Kim, a national expert on OCD who has seen over 3,000 OCD patients.
The first time I met with Dr. Kim, he asked me about what meds I had tried. And when I had told him, he resolutely said, “No more of that. You are done with that.” And he started me on Effexor XR, which I am on to this very day. Dr. Kim spoke with such confidence that I had felt confident. I remember thinking, I think this might actually work this time.
But Dr. Kim wasn’t done after he wrote out the prescription. He turned to me and said, “Cognitive-behavioral therapy. Tell me, have you heard of it?”
I had. Horror stories.
“It’s the best treatment there is for OCD. I’d like you to call Chris Donahue and get an appointment.”
“Okay.”
“It will be hell,” said Dr. Kim, telling me what to expect.
And it was– but it set me free from the reign of OCD. And that is why I was feeling sentimental as I sat in the office of this OCD genius for the last time, feeling cheesy but needing to tell him that he was one of my heroes.
Date: Wed, 27 September 2007
From: Jackie
To: Eir
please pray for me, honey.
i’m nervous again that i’m not saved. or that i did something in the wrong order.
it feels silly to me, but also serious, if that makes sense.
i need to relax. any Truth you want to speak to me would be great and welcomed.
love you muchly,
jackie lea
From: Eir
Sent: Wed 3/28/2007 12:13 AM
To: Sommers, Jackie L
honey, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” LORD GOD! I thank You that You are a God who is DETERMINED and that salvation is YOUR doing, not ours. Please help Jackie to rest in Your character, God! We can NOT do anything to make you not look at us and still want us to belong to You. I love you, jls! I see SO MUCH spiritual fruit in your life! I believe FOR you that you are saved and belong to a God who has chosen you as HIS and transformed you. GOODNIGHT!
Discovered a website this weekend that is very disturbing to me as a Christian obsessive-compulsive.
At GreatBibleStudy.com, you can read quotes like the following:
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, commonly referred to as OCD, is not a mental disorder or disease… it is a spiritually rooted bondage in the person’s mind that needs to be uprooted.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is basically demonic torment brought on by a person’s bondages to fear and shame.
These ‘voices’ or compulsive thoughts are NOT caused because of a chemical imbalance (which the secular world cannot explain anyways); they are there because of a spiritual bondage in the person’s life.
Now, don’t get me wrong! I believe that obsessive-compulsive disorder has entered into this world due to SIN, yes, but to negate that OCD is caused by a chemical imbalance seems ridiculous to me. As a Christian, I view ALL of life through a spiritual lens, but these quotes seem like the equivalent of saying, “Diabetes is not a problem with the pancreas– it’s a spiritual issue!!!” To say that diabetes is not connected to the pancreas’s inability to produce insuliin would be silly, just as saying that OCD is not connected to a chemical inbalance (our bodies absorb serotonin too quickly … that’s why we take SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors … they SLOW DOWN the reuptake/reabsorbtion of serotonin]).
All issues are spiritual issues, but that does not mean that they are NOT also medical issues. God is also the Author of Science and the Creator of our bodies. To not combine the spiritual with the scientific is short-sighted, I believe.
What are your thoughts on these quotes? I’d especially love to hear from obsessive-compulsive believers!
This is a repost of an earlier entry.
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS 